Conversation Topics
Or, things to say with your mask down
Our masks are down, but our guards are still up.
In the UK, the government has issued guidelines about what is safe to do now that lockdown is easing.
(The Conversation, Matisse)
As a result, SAGE has issued these hot conversation topics to ease the tension of post-lockdown small talk. Hope they help!
Together with your conversational partner, try to come up with a long word to describe the sensation of having severed all meaningless social ties, only to be forced to connect them again (and how this feels like charging that hot pink iPhone Mini your sister had, to see if it still works, only the Apple logo flickers briefly on screen before dying, and you realise that most friendships, like most Apple products, have a planned obsolescence).
With someone you haven’t seen since Summer 2019, discuss that fortnight where you tried overnight oats—which you had always taken to be an emblem of maturity, a primal sign of optimised life, such that a bruising early start could contain its own joy—only to realise that nothing makes you feel less alive than ‘life hacks’ like this.
Do be polite, and listen to their fantasies about quitting their role as an accountant, opening their own catering company, even if they’re the third suit to tell you this plan that evening, because, actually, you envy their specific dreams and how they outdo your craven wants.
Tell them you took as evidence that the leaves were changing as a sign that your life would soon be changing too, and, as someone suffering from Main Character Syndrome, cued a song on Spotify to coincide with this moment of your walk, and watch as their pupils narrow and their palm curls around their room-temp chardonnay.
Discuss the tempo and timbre of their flatmates’ lockdown sex noises, whether these compared with your own, and how your foray into the online world of sex toys now has UberKinky, a company you never signed up to, emailing you an array of dildos (glass, rubber… plaster) every week.
If you catch on that feeling of being in a surge of conversation, speeding to some conclusion together, like the Road Runner gearing up its legs to hurtle into oblivion off the cliff, before being gloriously suspended in mid-air, knowing that such flights of fancy cannot last—enjoy it! Bask in the brief sensation that, for a moment, both of your sentences are crystallising into something that feels like the truth.
Ask whether they agree that, if insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then waking up each day is fucking crazy.
Ask the person to come sit with you on the couch, conspiring with the kind of intimacy never seen at cocktail parties, then hint you need to lie down for a bit, then fall asleep.
Whether they donated to KONY 2012.
Beg them to explain how they have been spending their time, while yours has felt like a precious mineral, something that must be hidden from the sun.
In your head, question whether your attendance at this party can be chalked up to a matter of a) fitting in or b) truly belonging. Ponder the worlds of difference between the two, and make for the door to find option b) if need be.
Talk about the frisson of apocalyptic glee you felt in March 2020 and the drowning continuity you’ve felt since.
Interrogate whether they and their circle will ask for a mixture of WFH and office days once they’re back (JUST KIDDING).
Accept that for the rest of 2021, maybe your life, you will be Ellie Kemper in this scene from Bridesmaids.